'Jyoti Basu has an onerous responsibility'

The Gorkhaland agitation has wedged West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu squarely between a rock and hard place.

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October 15, 1986

ISSUE DATE: October 15, 1986

UPDATED: February 14, 2014 16:21 IST

The Gorkhaland agitation has wedged West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu squarely between a rock and hard place. He is having to balance his party's traditional commitment to some form of regional autonomy for the Darjeeling area dominated by Nepalese-speaking people, with resisting any accommodation with the current leadership of the movement whose demands have far exceeded the original goal. But instead of helping to extricate him from his unenviable discomfiture in the national interest, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his aides have chosen to play political football with the issue which, if left to bubble, could spread the poison of ethnic separatism throughout the land.

Surely, the prime minister could not possibly want to relive the recent history of Punjab where party-oriented political expediency has created the havoc of today. The Congress(I)'s shortsighted game-plan in West Bengal has suddenly given respectability to the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF)'s Subhash Ghising, a former corporal of the Indian army who was barely six months ago regarded as an irresponsible crank.

The Centre, in effect, has helped him to stake the claim of being the spokesman of the 15 lakh Gorkhas in and around the Darjeeling area. And he finds himself in the position of being able to play off the Centre against West Bengalina situation where the two need maximum cooperation.

Today, Ghising has been invited for talks by Union Home Minister Buta Singh - and he has a letter to prove it, which he gleefully flashes. This is a cruel slap in the face of Basu, who refuses to talk to him because he considers Ghising's GNU "anti-national". Rajiv does not agree because, he says, the Union home and law ministries have examined the GNLF's literature and seen nothing there which is anti-national.

This is patently absurd. Even though Ghising has lately been cooing like a moderate, his past record reverberates with hawk-like anti-national screeching. In the past six years of its existence, the GNLF has written letters to foreign heads of state and the United Nations seeking their help to end the Indian "genocide" of Gorkhas, and has appealed to the 40,000 Gorkhas in the Indian army to revolt. But Ghising has subsequently expressed regret over these acts. Corporal Ghising had even sounded a clarion call to observe Independence Day as a "black day" but later withdrew it on the eve of the occasion.

Basu is not the hardliner on the issue as he is being portrayed. He is committed to some form of regional autonomy, perhaps on the lines of a regional council. But he will not deal with anybody demanding a homeland for the Gorkhas or threatening violence. Some may view this attitude as a political ploy - a Jyoti Basu posture for the upcoming assembly elections, aimed at capturing the imagination of the people of Bengal who no doubt feel threatened by yet another movement to divide their state. But his choices are limited.

The autonomy question can only be resolved by the Centre, but right now New Delhi seems more interested in watching Basu squirm politically than in suggesting workable and imaginative solutions. And there is little doubt that Basu must, at some point, talk to the Gorkha movement's leadership. But as of now, the only recognisable leader, Ghising, comforted by the new credentials of moderatism heaped on him by the Centre, seems in no mood to withdraw his more radical demands.

If the issue was not so serious Rajiv's stand would have been laughable. Displaying astonishing ignorance, he kept referring to all Nepalis as foreigners until he was corrected by Buta Singh. Next he said that the problem concerned only those Nepalis who were still not citizens of India and now want Indian citizenship. To reduce the complex Gorkha demands to this simplistic matrix is a gross lack of judgement. What Rajiv wants is that the state Government solve the problem within the framework of the Constitution, and adds disingenuously that the Centre will intervene only if the state expresses its inability to tackle the problem. But the Centre is indulging in double-speak on this issue.

According to the Centre, giving regional autonomy to the Gorkhas, which will require a constitutional amendment, will open the floodgates for similar demands from other sections of the country. So, what exactly does the Centre hope to discuss with Ghising? If it is not prepared to concede the limited demand for a regional council, is it prepared to even discuss the much larger demand for a separate state? Is it not aware that even the promise of such talks creates hopes which if not met - and they cannot be met - will only fan the trend towards extremism? The impression is unavoidable that what the Centre is doing is indulging in one-upmanship.

Basu has an onerous responsibility. He must accelerate, implement and publicise economic development plans in that neglected region and begin a political dialogue with grassroots leaders while being firm about the national interest. In the quest for this Basu, too, must not be diverted by narrow politically partisan considerations. So far, Basu has failed to display any special acumen in tackling this issue. The ball is in his court, too. For now, he can rightly blame the Centre for duplicity, but in the end, he will have to take up the challenge of the Gorkhaland issue both as a politician and a statesman.

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